It’s been some time since the Golden State Warriors were championship contenders. But now that they’ll have Klay Thompson back at some point and given the moves they’ve made this offseason, that might as well change pretty soon.
The Warriors enter this season after a couple of years of missing the playoffs. They’ll be very aggressive to get back to their winning ways, and, according to Stephen Curry, the team is rounding up pretty well ahead of the season:
“What I’ve seen early in camp is there’s a commitment to just our style, and moving the ball, that offense by committee where everybody’s cutting, and screening for each other,” Curry said. “We obviously know that you get scouted, and fourth quarters come, things kind of slow down, you have to get to your bread and butter offense. But we have a lot of shooting, that we necessarily didn’t have the last couple of years. Being able to create space and create room on the floor with that shooting, I feel like will help us this year a lot offensively. Jordan Poole has just been a superstar in terms of taking advantage of his opportunity and continuing to get better, the work he puts in, and obviously he’s shown that early. He has a prime opportunity to be a sparkplug for us all year long.
“I think just, what Warriors basketball is and how you’ve seen us play for years on in, it’ll be another evolution of that. And hopefully, the spacing and the shooting that we have will open up a lot more opportunities and options across the board. And then when Klay gets back, it’s just a matter of figuring out what our rotation is, and understanding that he’s going to take us to another level. We’ve almost got like three seasons in one. It’s like the anticipation for Klay coming back; whenever he does come back, that first, maybe, month or six weeks, where you figure out what he looks like and getting his legs underneath him, and then you have the playoff push. We’re kind of breaking it up into those segments, and hopefully we take care of our business.”
Jordan Poole was a huge factor later in the season for the Warriors and his development could be key for this team. Also, whatever they can get out of Jonathan Kuminga and Moses Moody could be a big plus.
Otto Porter Jr — should he stay healthy, could give them another versatile defender and a big weapon in small-ball sets, while James Wiseman could also take a step forward.
It’s still pretty early to tell but it seems like people continue to sleep on the Warriors, and we’ve seen how that usually ends.
